


and you know in your heart it'll be worth it

by outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Mythical Beings & Creatures, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“At home, we sleep on the,” he points at the ceiling. “The top, so we don’t float away.” </p><p>Niall laughs. “The ceiling, you mean?” He traces the line of Harry’s dimple. “I figured you slept inside a castle, like in the pictures of what Atlantis looked like.”</p><p>“I doubt that’s accurate,” Harry says. He palms Niall’s thigh, running his hand down to his knee, where he pauses to feel out the unfamiliar bones with his fingertips. “Otters sleep holding hands so they won’t drift apart, did you know that?” </p><p>“What, are you an otter?” Niall asks. </p><p>“No, but it might not be too bad,” Harry says. He lays his head to rest on Niall’s chest, over his heart. His fingers tangle with Niall’s in the sheets, his skin tanned and smooth, Niall’s pale and scarred. </p><p>"Eh,” Niall says. “It’s not too bad, I guess.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	and you know in your heart it'll be worth it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baloonflies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baloonflies/gifts).



> thanks a million to arwa for the title, which is from walk the moon's "aquaman." fic is based on the merman prompt given, although i changed a few things - hope you don't mind. all the creatures mentioned in the fic are from real legends and are super interesting to read about.

Niall’s alarm clock goes off at four o’clock. The sun hasn’t risen like an egg yolk breaking up from the horizon, and not even the demented rooster that lives just outside his window hasn’t crowed over and over, sounding suspiciously like Niall’s least favorite primary school teacher.

He sits up and turns off his alarm before he can hit snooze, and then he pushes back the covers and throws his legs over the side of the bed. He forgot to put his slippers beside the bed before he went to sleep at eight o’clock last night tripping on Ambien, so it’s a long moment before he can bring himself to slide off the side of the bed and put his feet on the freezing cold floor.

The old wooden floorboards are insulated, of course, but Niall’s in the fourth year of an ongoing skirmish with the _aos sí_ living beneath his house. Cold air drifts up from their underground dwellings and circulates beneath his house, making the floor so cold to the touch he’s had his muddy boots frozen to the wooden slats before. He tiptoes carefully across the floor anyway, mindful not to wake them. It’s hardly fair that he’s up at this ungodly hour, it wouldn’t help for the fairies to be up, too.

Niall went to bed in his thermal underwear, so he pulls his trousers and heavy flannel shirt on over. Then he steps into his waders and puts a beanie on over his ruffled hair. He’s stayed up this late before, but somehow waking up this early is different, like his mum’s face when she puts on makeup to go to midnight Mass.

The four overturned glasses drying beside the sink are untouched from yesterday, and the microwave that always shuts off randomly flashes a bright green blinking 0 at him over and over again. His boots and trainers are lined up beside the door on the rack he made out of a couple of pieces of spare chicken wire and brass pipe, and the white-painted walls are the very light blue color of a freshly laid egg.

It’s home, anyway. Niall steps outside with his fishing rod over his shoulder and doesn’t bother locking the door behind him. Predawn sunlight paints his neighbors’ little houses in shades of blue, their front porch lights like pools of gold spilling over the stone walk-ups from the cobblestone streets. The air smells of sea salt and fish, like always, and Niall takes a deep lungful before he starts on the long walk across town to the little harbor where Bobby docks his fishing boat.

Moving around this early, when even the selkies can’t be heard baying from the rocks just off the coast in their low, moaning voices, is rather like sleepwalking. Niall pulls his beanie down over the tips of his pink ears, his heart buoying up like a fishing lure. He’s spent too much time away, that must be it. He’s so happy to be back now.

The Cú Sídhe raises his big, wolflike head from his paws when Niall passes the front of the Catholic church where he’ll go to midnight Mass tonight. Niall pauses tentatively, the wolf-dog’s glittering eyes considering him attentively. When they were just lads, Niall and his mate Matt had walked past the reaper dog and he’d howled, low in his throat.

Niall spent all day in school fidgeting with the hole in the knee of his jeans and wondering which one of them would die, if it was him, how it’d happen. Then Matt was stung by a bee during recess and died of anaphylactic shock before the hour was out.

Niall’s not overly fond of the omen as a result, although in some ways he can see his usefulness. If the dog bayed now like he did then, Niall could get his affairs in order, at least. He holds his breath without meaning to. Cú Sídhe just lets out a little puff and puts his giant head back down on his paws the size of oven mitts, so Niall sidles past him.

The rows of businesses and buildings give way suddenly to a cobblestone avenue running perpendicular to Main Street, and on the other side of that road, the ocean laps gently against the shore. Niall vaults over the cement barrier keeping cars from tumbling over the side of the road and down the rocky cliffs giving way to sandy beaches. Ages ago, the little town had had a whole sea wall with murals and everything, but that’s worn away over time so that when Niall glances over his shoulder at the town he’d grown up in, all he can make out of the sea mural now is the faint stain of green and blue paint.

Bobby’s little boat, no more than a two-seater with a sun-bleached white paint job and a ten-horsepower engine, is moored to the dock next to Fisherman O’Malley’s proper fishing vessel and Mrs. Butler’s covered boat. She uncovers it in the spring and summer and floats around on the Irish Sea to tan, which wouldn’t be a problem except that she insists on doing it fully nude. Year after year schoolchildren pass along the story that her off-putting rump is what keeps the merrow from ever visiting port. Niall wouldn’t think anything of it except that they don’t, so maybe there’s something to it.

Niall checks the depth of the water with the meter stick attached to the dock with a length of rotting green rope to make sure that he’s not going in over his head, and then he puts his fishing rod and lures and bait into the boat. He puts his work gloves on and slides off the side of the dock and lands up to his hips in water. He pushes the boat far enough out from the dock that the engine won’t catch on the silty seafloor and then pulls himself over the side, dripping water into the bottom of the boat.

Niall pulls the starter rope once, twice before it catches, and then he adjusts his grip on the tiller, and then the little boat is speeding over the few choppy waves on the Irish Sea. The smell of the sea always drops dead away once he’s been on the water more than a few minutes, but of course his nose starts running and won’t stop till he’s back on land.

The boat makes quick work of the first five miles or so out from port, so just as the sun finally breaks over the horizon in a faint strip of golden light playing over the tops of the waves like coals holding onto the last of their embers, Niall cuts the growling engine.

The waves lap against the side of his boat, and the kelpies begin to stir as the sun hits their hides. Back in town, the church bell rings for Christmas Eve morning mass. Niall hasn’t been awake in time for this service since he used to go with his mum, and…well, that was a long time ago.

He puts a chunk of fish bait on the end of his fishing hook, attaches a lure, and tosses his line until it seems an appropriate distance out. Then Niall stretches out in the bottom of the boat, pillowing his head on his folded arms. If only the sun wasn’t coming up, then he’d be quite comfortable; as it is, the sun seems to be shining directly into his eyes.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe much longer than that – he _might_ have dozed off, not that he’ll ever tell Bobby that – Niall realizes that faint moaning sound he’s hearing isn’t just the breeze skating over the top of the waves. It’s singing. He picks his head up to check on the kelpies, half-people half-seal sunning themselves on the rocky coast, but they’ve not yet moved for the day. It might be _slau_ , the spirits of the dead, but they’re like as not to be sat on the pews beside Niall’s neighbors at mass.

Niall puts his head back down, checking his fishing rod to make sure that the hook and lure are still attached. Then he hears it again, and this time there’s no mistaking it. “Hello?” he calls. Maybe someone tried to swim from England to Ireland and got stuck in the middle. That’s got to have happened at some point, right? Oh, God. What if it’s a murderer?

No one answers.

Niall closes his eyes, his hands white-knuckled in his lap, and yes, he’s _sure_ of it. “I can hear you singing,” he shouts, feeling only a little daft. Then, “Uh, it sounds nice,” because he’s not sure what else to say.

“You think so?” someone asks, much closer than Niall expected. Like, really close. As in within arm’s length, maybe. He lets out a very dignified shout and whirls so fast that the boat rocks, and then he has to close his eyes against the seasickness testing the contents of his watery stomach. Niall peers over the side of the boat and there’s a bloke floating in the water. Niall leans back so that all he can see is the top of his wavy brown hair, and then he swallows and looks at him again. He’s got bright sea green eyes and a big mouth and tan skin.

“What are you doing?” Niall asks.

“Singing,” the bloke answers, like it’s obvious. “Didn’t you like it?”

“You got the lyrics wrong,” Niall answers, clinging to the only part of this conversation he’s sure of. “It was ‘I Am the Walrus’, right? You were just saying, like…random words.”

The boy – he’s really too young to be a man, but he looks on the cusp of it, like Niall’s dad in pictures between the year he got married and the next – the boy flips his hair. Somehow, even though he’s been floating in the water, his hair isn’t stuck to his face with sea water.

Oh, dear. Niall’s starting to have a bad feeling about this. He goes over everything he knows about _leannán sídhe._

“Well, that’s what I heard at their concert,” the boy insists.

“Okay, well, whoever you heard covering them got it wrong, because –”

“It wasn’t a cover,” the boy says, his brows drawing together over his sparkling green eyes. Niall holds his breath. “I swear, it was them. George and, uh, John, and…I don’t know, it was a while ago, in America.”

Niall drums his fingers against his knees, his wellies squeaking in the bottom of the boat. “Well.”

The boy goes on conversationally, “It was warmer there.” He sounds a little morose.

Politely, Niall asks, “Would you like to come aboard?”

The boy’s face crumbles, and then he starts crying. Niall’s hands flutter about like birds attached to the end of his wrist before he puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder, touching him for the first time. His skin is icy cold and damp, but it feels unerringly like plain old human skin. He shivers when Niall squeezes his arm, leaning into his hand.

“What’s wrong, did I say something? Are you hungry? I brought a granola bar, but you can have it –”

“It’s just that I’m stuck,” the boy shows Niall. He twists in the water and a great big pair of flippers shower Niall’s face in cold sea water.  He’s raised his tail out of the water for Niall to see. His great big scaly fish tail.

Niall casts his eyes up heavenward. Staring up at the thin gray clouds gathering in the robin’s egg blue sky, Niall asks, “You aren’t trying to lure me to my death, are you? Because I…don’t want to go,” he finishes lamely. The boy’s tail – now that Niall knows it’s there, and he can see it, it splashes gently behind him, gray-blue in the cold sea water – appears for a moment between waves.

“What do you think I am, a fairy-lover?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No,” the boy retorts. “I’m a merrow.”

“Oh,” Niall says, relieved. “Okay.”

When Niall peers closer, and he can see the fine mesh of a net tangled up around him. He’s done a fine job of tangling himself up in it as well, Niall realizes. He’s probably not got a gray-green tail at all, it’s the ropes twisted around him making it look that way. Niall looks around, but he’s reminded just how desolate the ocean surface is. All the life goes on beneath it.

“Why don’t you dive?” Niall asks. “That’s what you do, right?”

The boy’s face cracks again like Niall’s just said something horrific, and he thinks briefly about taping his own mouth shut. “I can’t, I’ve lost my –” He makes a sound unlike anything Niall’s ever heard, something between a dolphin’s sharp cry and a whale’s low moan. “It’s like a hat,” he supplies, after a moment.

And, oh. _Cochallin draíochta_ , Niall’s heard of that. “Magic hat,” he translates vaguely. “That’s a real thing?”

“Well, why shouldn’t it be?” the boy asks. “I’m Harry, by the way. What are you, a _clurichaun_?”

“A leprechaun!” Niall repeats. “Fuck off.”

The boy actually draws back, “Rude!”

Niall’s smile spreads across his face so fast he can’t quite cover it with his hand before the boy spots it. Now that he’s not quite so stuck on wondering whether the omen dog was wrong, Niall can see the shadows under his eyes, and the way his skin looks pallid and loose on his bones. Malnutrition if Niall has ever seen it.

When Niall doesn’t say anything, the boy tilts his head and looks up coyly through his lashes. Niall finds somewhere else to look right quick. “I'm Niall. How long?” he asks. “Have you been like this, I mean?”

“A while,” the boy shrugs. “Dunno. Days and days.” He reels back as far as he can when Niall pulls the fishing knife out of his waders. “Wait, stop, please,” he says, his voice shaking. “It’s not nice to fish, especially after we’ve been talking. Please.”

No one’s ever begged him for their life before. Niall pauses, then says, “That was for my da. Tomorrow’s Christmas, and I promised him something fresh. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. I can cut you free, if you want.”

“No more fishing after,” Harry says, his rumbling low voice firm. “Next time, eat a –” Harry waves his hand around while he looks for the right word. His shoulders bob out of the water on a wave and Niall realizes he’s shirtless, his skin prickling with goosebumps. “Something that lives where fish don’t swim. A cat? Do your kind eat cats?”

“No, and you should watch it with that ‘your kind’ language,” Niall says, terribly amused. “The Troubles weren’t that long ago.”

The boy looks utterly perplexed for a moment, and then he looks Niall over curiously. Niall takes the opportunity to lean over the side of the boat and start sawing through the slimy net holding Harry in place.

This close, he can smell him, and beneath the odor of sea water and salt and fish Niall can smell the lurid rotting scent of someone starving, their body digesting themselves for food. And here Harry is, chatting Beatles songs. Niall redoubles his efforts.

“Is it warm?” Harry asks. “Where you are, outside of the water, I mean.”

“Sure, some places,” Niall says, thinking again of his nice warm bed and the electric heater he fit between the bedcover and the top sheet. It’s a little like laying on a warm, sandy beach. He tells Harry this, cutting through the last of the ropes keeping him in place.

Harry’s tail is littered with little cuts and for a wild moment Niall thinks he did that, and then he notices the rough edges of Harry’s palm, his fingers ever so lightly webbed, and he realizes Harry must’ve tried to cut himself free with a rock, or maybe an aluminum can, a bit of flotsam he was lucky enough to find.

“Sounds nice,” Harry says, doing his best to lift himself over the side of the boat while Niall pulls under his arms. Too weak to swim, and what kind of chances does a fish have that can’t swim?

What the hell is Niall going to do with a bloody _merman_ in his boat?

Before he even finishes having the thought, Harry starts shivering. Niall unclips the buckles at his shoulders and shrugs his flannel shirt off, but he freezes in the middle of what he’s doing. Harry shudders and shudders, the scales on his tale shifting through colors like that children’s book where the fish gives his rainbow scales away.

For a split second, his tail is the color of Niall’s own wide blue eyes. Then the scales flip back, or recede somehow, leaving smooth pale skin in its wake. In just a matter of seconds, Niall has a naked boy with two fishbelly-pale legs shivering at the bottom of his boat.

It’s almost the most magical thing Niall’s ever seen. He wraps Harry up in his flannel shirt while Harry starts snoring, and then, because what else is he supposed to do? He turns them toward shore. 

***

Laura greets Niall at her pub by throwing a pint at his face. Niall catches it nimbly out of the air with the ease of long practice, and she scowls, the expression only half-obscured by a smile. “Idiot,” she says.

“What did I do?” Niall demands.

Harry stumbles into the wall behind Niall. He veers around unsteadily on his new legs, and Niall catches him before he cracks his head on the exposed beam in the wall. Harry sags into his side, clutching Niall’s shirt for dear life. “I’m going to be sick,” Harry says, and promptly gets sick on the floor.

“That,” Laura points. She points to the rag and bleach spray set on the table nearest them. Her visions, when she has them, are unnervingly accurate.

“Oh,” Niall says. “Sorry.” He rubs Harry’s back even though the smell of his sick is pretty horribly nasty, and Laura shoots a look at Bressie, who nimbly rounds the bar and comes round to take Harry out of Niall’s arms. Niall rolls up his sleeves and puts his work gloves back on because _ew._

Laura unrolls some paper towels from the roll for him. Her shadow blocks the flashing multicolored fairy lights from shining down on Niall’s head, for which he’s grateful. She and Bressie went all out on their pub this year, which ordinarily Niall would love, but at this minute he’s struggling not to be sick himself. “Where’d you find him, then?” she sighs.

“In the sea,” Niall mutters. “In the sea,” he repeats, when Laura just fixes him with that unnerving stare. He wishes that she’d be too busy to interrogate him even though that’s exactly why he’s come, but there’s only two _clurichaun_ sat up on barstools, their chins only reaching bar height, with massive tankards of ale sat in front of them. They probably came over after mass and stayed through the lunch rush. Niall can’t believe it’s so late, no wonder he’s so hungry.

Across the room, Bressie installs Harry at a table with garland hung around, and Harry reaches up and blithely tries to pull some down to inspect it. Bressie rushes back over with a plate heaped with food to stop him before he pulls the whole Christmas decoration shebang down on their heads, and Harry more or less falls back into his seat, an abashed look on his face.

“He’s a merrow,” Niall tells Laura. “I think. He had a tail when I fished him out of the water.”

Laura nods her head sagely. “That would do it. How long has he been like this?” she asks, pointing at Harry, who’s currently cutting his chips into bite-size portions. His hands are surprisingly graceful around the utensils, although when he lifts the food to his lips he promptly opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out to guide the food in. A little weird, is all. Niall ignores the fond clutch in his chest.

Niall scratches his head. Just long enough for Niall to grab the spare set of clothes out of Mrs. Butler’s boat, so Harry’s wearing an oversized pink blouse and a pair of billowy trousers, all of which are much too big on him. His hair, for all that, is still perfectly dry. “Maybe an hour?”

“That’s good,” Laura nods. Then she slaps the back of Niall’s head, who rubs his mussed hair with a scowl. “I’m going to go make him something, and you – clean this up, won’t you?”

Niall thinks about snapping at her, and then he realizes how much of a favor she’s doing him, and how much he loves her, and he puts his annoyance aside. He starts scrubbing the floor, instead. Laura scritches her fingers through Niall’s hair, sweet and soothing, before she moves away.

Niall watches her go while his hands work automatically to lift the stain before it sets in. He hasn’t been back in town long enough for the set of her narrow shoulders to be familiar, or the way her long blond hair falls over her back. It’s different than the short dark hair she had when she came to town, different from when Niall got to know and love her like family.

Bressie looks more the same, his face still humorous and paternal even though he’s almost as young as Niall. He talks softly to Harry, the low rumble of his voice washing over the pub like a gentle pat down before he let anyone into the clubs in bigger cities. Taking the edge off, the switchblade out.

Niall ducks behind the bar to throw his trash and gloves into the big bin in the kitchen, and Laura corners him in the narrow hallway with the loos on one side and the door to the kitchen on the other.

“You know I’m glad you’re back,” she starts.

“Glad to be back,” Niall says, and feels it. Even with a boy who normally has a fish tail sat at a nearby table eating one of her veggie burgers and fried chips. _Or maybe_ , a tiny voice inside of him says, _because._

Laura nods once. “But what you did today, you shouldn’t have done. He doesn’t belong here, love.”

“I’m not trying to keep him,” Niall says quietly. “I’m trying to get him home, I guess. He lost his hat? A hat, a _cochallin draíochta_.”

“I know what it’s called,” the witch laughs at Niall. The poinsettias in the vases on each table regain a little of their vibrant red color, and Niall relaxes into it by a few degrees. “He can’t dive without it. Something about having started out human, I think.”

“Started out human?” Niall asks, startled.

Laura shrugs. “Maybe, I dunno. Some stories say that merrow were once human and asked to be made into sea people, so a witch blessed them with a magical object to transform with. So that’s why they turn back. It’s not sustainable, though. He’ll have to find his _cochallin draíochta,_ the sooner the better.”

Niall swallows. “What happens if we don’t? What if it’s lost?”

Laura shrugs again, less comfortably this time. “I suppose things happen the way they’re supposed to.”

Niall levels her a very serious look. Or he means for it to be. He thinks of his father on a fishing boat every morning for the past thirty years so that they don’t have to lose the Glas Gaibhnenn’s blessing. As much milk as they could possibly want, but she doesn’t like it when they eat her cow brothers and sisters, so it’s fish for their little seaside community, and that’s all.

And Bobby’s been one of the loyal few supplying it for years and years, him and the boys they’re meant to meet for dinner tomorrow. And Niall has nothing to feed them. He breaks eye contact with Laura, cursing softly under his breath.

“Honey,” Laura cuffs him on the shoulder. “Come for Christmas dinner here tomorrow. All you have to do is bring pie.”

Niall’s shoulders slump. “Well, alright,” he laughs, and she claps him on the shoulder again, firmer and softer at the same time.

“I’m gonna get something mixed up for the boy, make this all easier on him. Go on,” Laura steers him back out to the pub main.

Niall pulls out the seat beside Harry’s at the scratched wooden table. Somewhere around here, Niall carved his own initials into the underside of a table when he was flat on his back drunk one night. No one, not even Bressie or Laura, know it’s there, but that hadn’t been the point.

Bressie turns his head, his chin balanced on his hand, and waggles his eyebrows at Niall. Niall blows him a kiss. Harry, blind to all this, spears a chip with his fork. He eats enthusiastically but slow, and there’s something soothing about his endless patience with the food that keeps dropping off the tines.

Niall stretches his arm along the back of Harry’s chair, wiping at his runny red nose. His face always lights up in the cold so that he looks a bit like a Christmas elf, and it’s embarrassing and yet somehow also familiar, at the same time. When he looks in the mirror, he looks like his dad.

Niall checks his watch. They should swing by and check on him, or maybe Niall would take Harry back to his first, then drop by his dad’s. Somewhere in there he’s got to call his dad’s friends and let them know to meet here.

Realization dawns slowly, like the cold creep of a raw egg dripping down his head every first day of school for good luck. He’s so lucky. His problems are so quaint, easy, even. Not like Harry, who’s only got so much time until – well, only so much time. Niall’s not quite sure what would happen but he knows better than to think that nothing will.

If there’s one thing he knows about magic, it’s this: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. That’s what Mum would say, her hair framing her face when she leaned over his bedside to turn the lamp off and kiss his forehead goodnight. “You’ve got what you’ve got, and it could be better, but it could be a helluva lot worse,” she’d say. It’s not the wanting that drives you mad, he understands now. It’s thinking you can have what you can’t.

Harry takes Niall’s moment of introspection to stick his hand in Niall’s hair. “Well,” says Niall.

“Feels different than mine,” Harry frowns. “Here, try it.” So Niall touches Harry’s hair and then, when Harry tips his head into Niall’s hand, sinks his fingers in. Harry’s right, his hair does feel different, like seaweed, somehow, or those water repellant beads they always show at school fairs to demonstrate the wonders of science to kids with .2 second-long attention spans. Niall loves those things.

“This is…nice,” Laura says, surprising Niall so much that he pulls his hand away too fast and winds up half-snarled in Harry’s curly hair. Harry’s left leg shoots out and he kicks Bressie in the shin. Bressie just laughs.

“Ow,” Harry says, when Niall’s finally gotten his hair free. He rubs at his head. Niall pats him on the shoulder consolingly because he can’t figure what else to do, and then he looks to Laura. She passes him a Styrofoam bowl with a plastic lid on and instructions to feed Harry before bed. “I’m not a fish like you keep in a tank,” he says primly. A hard note enters his tone, unlike anything Niall’s heard before.

Niall pushes Harry’s knees down. He’s drawn them up to his chest, a swimmer about to kick out and away if ever Niall’s seen one. “She didn’t mean it like that,” he says.

“She loves you,” Harry says waspishly. His tone is bitter.

“Let that be a warning to you,” Bressie says, in his low, sweet tone, and Niall stands up, taking Harry with him. “We’ll see you tomorrow, then?” Bressie asks. Niall nods, gives him a salute, and then he leans in to kiss Laura on the cheek. She turns her face up to him, her considering eyes never leaving Harry.

Their breaths come out in fans of condensation on the brisk street, and Harry shivers in his ill-fitting clothes. Right, home first and then he’ll ring Bobby. Niall wishes, not for the first time, that this whole seaside village didn’t eschew cell phones.

The old telephone wires still arc from pole to pole across the city center, and rooks gather in long lines only to take off with a sound like a bunch of half-strangled car horns on a major interstate. Niall never quite gets used to the way they all beat their wings and take to the air at once, or the sound it makes, like ripping paper. Just. It’s weird, it is.

There aren’t any out tonight, though. It’s just Niall and Harry and Harry’s uncoordinated lurching from side to side like his inner ears are all messed up. He careens into Niall, who automatically loops his arms around his waist to keep him up. Harry almost goes limp, the way he might in the water, where it wouldn’t be so hard to hold him up. “It’s these blasted flat flippers!” Harry gets out, pointing at his foot. Mrs. Butler’s garden slippers look very fetching on his long skinny feet. “This _walking_ thing, it’s more like falling from one step to the next.”

Niall gets them going again, clutching Harry to his side. They’ve enough time to go home and have a kip before they get changed for midnight mass. Niall stops in the kitchen to ring Bobby to let him know he ran into a bit of a snag but that he’s bringing a friend to Mass, and Bobby takes him through the match he missed while he was out all day.

Niall leans his hip against the edge of his laminate counter and spins the telephone cord around his finger, looking at the antique curtains hung above his sink. He’d meant to replace them but never quite got around to it, so now he likes the terrible gingham pattern and the way his white cabinets have little splotches of pink when the sun sets through the window. It’s so good to be home.

When Niall’s done, he goes to find Harry, who’s already figured out how showers work. Niall hasn’t got a proper bath, just a shower with a curtain and a sink with a mirror above that’s quickly clouding with steam. Harry hasn’t bothered to close the curtain, or the loo door, so he spots Niall immediately. “I missed water,” he says, beaming even as Niall’s floor gets soaked.

“Close the curtain,” Niall says. “It’ll be cold in about five minutes.”

“Cold!” Harry crows. “I’ve swam the Arctic!” Five minutes later, he’s budging Niall over on his own bed, soaking wet, naked, and shivering. His hair is bizarrely, permanently dry. “It got cold,” he says, his teeth chattering.

Niall can feel the heat blooming over his cheeks. “Come now, you’ve made a mess of that! Get a towel, mate.”

Harry blinks owlishly. “Towel?” he repeats, rolling the word around in his mouth like he likes the way it tastes. So Niall grabs a towel from the stack in the loo and lobs it over to Harry, who makes the connection quickly, all things considered, and starts drying himself.

Niall’s cheeks don’t feel any less hot. “We’ve got to find something for you to wear.”

“Do I have to wear a shirt?” Harry says the last word scornfully. It’d taken Niall half an hour to get him into Mrs. Butler’s awful blouse, which, well, was fair.

Niall pauses from digging through his bureau for something for Harry. “What are you saying about my wardrobe, fish boy?”

“Nothing, if you promise not to call me that again,” Harry offers, so Niall gives him a Henley to wear under his borrowed button-up shirt, a pair of pants and one of Bobby’s old pair of trousers. He’s longer-legged than Niall, so hopefully it’s not too bad a fit. Which reminds Niall, he’s still got to find a way to explain Harry to his dad.

Harry taps Niall on his shoulder to turn around when he’s done getting dressed. “How do I look?” he asks, smiling nervously.

And, well. He’d been a bit of a wreck the first time Niall met him, and then he’d had scales, and after that he’d been wearing an old woman’s dodgy clothes. But now. His hair curls over the collar of Niall’s blue shirt, his cheeks flushed a soft shade of pink to match his lips. His broad shoulders taper down to a narrow waist and those skinny newborn foal legs. Niall could slap himself just for looking.

“Human,” Niall finally answers.

Harry’s face is unreadable. “Is that a good thing?”

“If you want to be,” Niall shrugs. He clears his throat. “I’ve got to get changed, and then we can go to my dad’s.”

Harry wanders over to Niall’s bureau. He picks up the odds and ends Niall’s pulled out of his pockets and left up there for later sorting: a bunch of spare change, fishing hooks, a handful of pens and markers, ticket stubs, a takeaway receipt, an earring that he found washed up on the beach. It’s this Harry plucks out of the detritus, studying it in his palm.

Niall watches him until he realizes he’s watching, and then he shuffles off to put his nice trousers and his clean white button-up on. He debates over whether to wear a sport coat and decides against it, as the sky smells like iron and ozone – snow. He puts on his usual heavy coat, the one with flannel on the inside and that thick material like canvas on the outside.

Harry promptly shoves his hand into the open side of Niall’s coat and tickles his armpit, frowning. “This is weird,” he observes. Niall instinctively crushes Harry’s hand. He doesn’t even attempt to take it back. “You need this to stay warm, hm? This is why you should have scales,” Harry declares. Niall stops feeling like Harry might be teasing him and lets him lay his palm flat over his chest. “That’s weird, too,” Harry says, centering his palm over Niall’s chest.

“Just a heartbeat,” Niall mumbles.

Harry merely hums. He stoops down to press his ear against Niall’s chest, and Niall looks down at the top of his mess of curls, wondering where his life took this strange turn. “I can’t hear your air sacs inflating.” He pokes Niall’s chest. “Just this sound like wind.”

“Lungs,” Niall answers. “You’ve probably got them too.”

“No,” Harry insists, shaking his head. “I’m still – no. I’m still me.” His fingers tighten in Niall’s shirt, and Niall strokes his hair.

Niall says, “Still better than starving to death in that net, right?”

Harry finally straightens, his feet planted shoulder-width apart for balance. He hasn’t let go of Niall’s shirt, though. “Well,” he starts, so Niall pinches him. Harry goes for Niall’s nose, so Niall hip-checks him and Harry falls over in a mess of limbs onto Niall’s bed. He pushes himself up, his nest of curls a riot around his face.

“C’mon,” Niall says. “You’ve got to meet my dad.”

Harry finds a rhythm walking on the way over to Bobby’s by swinging his arms counterpoint to his legs. Niall wished he’d thought of telling Harry that sooner, but it’s not like he’d ever had to teach anyone how to walk before. Some of his mates have kids, but not Niall himself.

He’s shaken out of his introspection by the will-o-the-wisps circling all throughout the town. Normally the fairy sprites stay near their homes in the bogs near the coast, but on holidays like this, they do the townspeople a special favor and light their way. It’s a bit like having live fireworks shoot by overhead on a swift breeze, not so fast that they scream through the air, not so slow that they aren’t booking it.

Harry thrusts his fingers up to brush the belly of a little fire sprite, who accepts his gesture with a quick nip to his fingertips. Harry jerks his hand back down hissing, clutching his hand to his chest, and Niall laughs. The blips of firelight only serve to make the street look more blue and gray, infinitely colder, even though Niall’s quite warm with Harry swerving into his side for balance often as not.

Niall dreamt of this street while he was abroad, lamplit by old-fashioned street posts and unevenly cobbled. He saw everything from a bird’s eye view, including the missing tiles on his dad’s roof from the last time he sent Niall up to hang Christmas lights and Niall almost died. Well, he _could’ve_ died if he’d fallen off, anyway.

Mum had seen the tiles fall through the window in her study and rushed out to check and see if he was dead, and when she found he wasn’t, she’d gotten all sharpish with him. Sometimes Niall thinks he understands that. It’s scary when something outside of your control happens to someone you love.

They huddle together on Bobby’s front stoop. Niall knocks just twice, his knuckles sharp and prickling in the cold winter air, and if he concentrates very hard, he could almost imagine that he can hear Bobby shuffling to the door from his favorite spot in the armchair facing the TV. The door opens inward, and Bobby’s stood before him in all of not-quite-six-foot glory. Niall feels himself smile.

Bobby steps back to usher them in, and when Niall passes him, he greets him with a firm squeeze to the elbow. Harry flounders after Niall, his hand knotted in the back of Niall’s shirt. He looks a little green around the gills, and Niall wonders whether he’s about to vom again. “Dad,” Niall starts, “this is Harry, he’s a friend.”

Bobby puffs his chest out and sizes up Harry, who does his best to stand up on his own. He lists side to side a little like his body still thinks it’s in water. Bobby cracks a grin at him. “This one,” he says to Niall, jerking a thumb at Harry, “has the right idea.”

“He’s not drunk, he’s just…okay, he’s drunk,” Niall says.

“Did you catch us something to eat tomorrow?” Bobby asks. He turns and slowly shuffles back to his favored seat in the living room, and Niall feels a little like his mother, the way he wants to pester his dad about whether he’d taken his pain meds.

“What did the doctor say at your check-up?” Niall asks. He pauses to hang his coat on the hook beside the door and Harry follows suit politely. Niall takes his hand to lead him back into the house without thinking. “How’s your hip?”

Bobby lets out a sigh when he sinks into his chair. “Everything is fine,” Bobby reassures Niall with a little laugh. “You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough,” Niall grumbles. Harry perches on the end of the sofa, and Niall sets about tidying his dad’s living room. There’s a couple of empty beer cans on the coffee table and three newspapers beside his dad’s armchair, so Niall drops them in the recycling bin and unrolls a couple of paper towels and digs the cleaner out from beneath the sink to wipe down the counters.

In the living room, Niall can hear Bobby whisper to Harry, “He’s a nervous cleaner. I just let him do it, his mum said it was ‘self-care,’ or something. Well, and what’s your story?”

“I’m a merrow,” Harry says seriously. “Niall saved my life but I lost my,” again he makes that indescribable noise, like a bottlenose dolphin’s laugh mixed with the low song of a whale, “and now I have legs.”

Bobby nods seriously. “Did he get you something to eat? Niall, get him something to eat.”

Niall rolls his eyes and sets about warming up a can of beans ‘n’ franks on the hob. He tosses a can of frozen veg into a pot on the hob for good measure, and Harry and Bobby continue talking in low voices. Harry worries at his bottom lip when he gets nervous, and he tucks his feet inward against each other, rocking back and forth in his seat like he’s riding an invisible wave. It’s strange, though. He looks comfortable making Bob laugh, not as out of sorts as Niall expected.

Niall serves them all dinner and by the time he and Harry are done with the dishes – “it’s impolite not to help, Niall, you _have_ to let me” – it’s time for them to make the trek to midnight mass. Bobby refuses to bring his walker with him, so Harry and Niall flank him on either side for the dawdling shuffle off his side street.

The omen dog is still waiting on the front steps when they arrive. Niall wouldn’t think anything of it, except that the dog makes three low tones deep in his throat. Niall freezes, his heart pounding frantically in his chest. Bobby doesn’t seem to have heard, and Harry doesn’t know what it means, but Niall – Niall remembers.

They join the slow trickle of townspeople into the old Irish Catholic chapel, which lists a little to one side after decades of exposure to the winds rolling off the sea, and Niall fights back the panic rising in his chest. That’s the thing about magic. It doesn’t lie. 

***

Harry bumps into Niall on the walk home. Niall thinks it’s an accident until Harry does it again, and then Niall pauses in the middle of setting him back upright on his feet. On his flippers, as Harry calls them. Harry’s frowning. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, what’s the matter with you?”

Harry heaves a sigh and then a laugh, and Niall bites his lip, because of course he knew. He shakes his head. “Just, nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“‘Course it matters, if it’s bothering you,” Harry says. He aims a kick at the back of Niall’s leg and Niall sticks his foot out to trip him. Harry goes windmilling his arms down the lane; when he regains his balance, he lets out a hoot of delight. He takes an experimental lurch back toward Niall, and then another, and Niall realizes he’s discovered his land legs. And running. Harry practically skips up to him, the heels of his boots only dragging a little.

Harry stumbles into Niall’s space, waggling his eyebrows. Niall pins his eyebrow with his thumb. “What?”

In response, Harry just sticks his tongue out, and then he’s practically wind sprinting down the road. Niall’s eyes widen. “No, there’s a – it’s a hill, Harry, you’ll – ” And he goes tearing after, a Technicolor vision of Harry crashing straight into a brick wall flashing across his eyes.

By the time he’s caught up to Harry, Harry is tumbling down the slope onto Niall’s street, looking like he’s barely keeping on his feet. Niall hurries after him and when Harry lets out a laugh that’s total exhilaration, Niall joins in. It’s almost as good as running when he’s drunk, he feels like he’s moving so much faster than he really is. Like if he tries hard enough, he can spread his arms and lift up, rise straight out of the street and into the air.

Harry catches him round the middle and they both very nearly go down in a pile of limbs outside Niall’s door. They go into a twirl as their momentum burns out, and Harry puts his head down on Niall’s shoulder to laugh. His breath is warm on Niall’s neck. Niall fishes around his pocket for his keys, and Harry hums, fisting his hands in Niall’s jumper.

They step into the house and separate to hang their coats up on the hook beside the door. The burst of adrenaline fades, and his head feels like it’s full of bees, buzzing and impossibly loud and eating the same idea over and over again: one of them is going to die in the next three days. The knowledge of it settles heavily in Niall’s stomach, like his nan’s fruitcake.

Harry prods Niall into his bedroom, and then he strips out of his clothes as fast as possible till he’s down to just his pants. Niall turns the electric blanket on and carefully climbs into bed beside him, Harry impatiently dragging him in and closer with a handful of his shirt.

“Clingy,” Niall observes.

“You seem sad,” Harry counters. “Bobby – your dad – he said that you’d been away for a while. That maybe you weren’t happy to be back.”

Harry’s arm loops around Niall’s stomach. Niall touches Harry’s forearm, feeling nothing but soft skin and downy hair. “No, no, of course I am.”

Harry’s next words come out muffled in Niall’s shoulder. “He said maybe your mum. That you missed her.”

“What, did you two not talk about anything beside me?” Niall asks. Harry doesn’t move, so Niall says, “Sure I do. That’s normal, you know. Doesn’t mean I’m sad. This is just the way my face is. Are you saying I have a sad face?”

Harry actually pulls away to study his expression. “A long time ago, missiles used to fall above the – I guess you’d call it the city I lived in. It was off the coast of Hawai’i and ships would sink all the time. We built homes out of them, later, when the bombs stopped falling and the water was safe to swim in again.”

“Yeah,” Niall says quietly. “Like that.”

Harry nods. Niall stares up at the ceiling, which shivers a little with waves reflected off the surface of the ocean. No, it can’t be the ocean. Sometimes he forgets, is all. It must be the trough outside, for the _aos sí._

“Hey,” Harry says. Niall hums. “If you turned your head, we’d be kissing.”

Niall lets the comment drop solidly into his ear, like the drops he’d have to put in when he was little and got ear infections all the time. It must be one of the three of them the omen dog whined for, Niall thinks. Him, his dad, and Harry. The logic should be easy. He’s known his dad his whole life, and Harry just for a day. Simple math. It’s silly to get invested.

He turns his head, and Harry slides his mouth over his. Harry nudges Niall’s cheek with his nose until he angles his head the way Harry wants, and then he licks his lips and brings his head back down. It’s less of an innocent dry press this time, more demanding and inviting, taking as much as it’s willing to give. Harry snakes his leg between Niall’s, curling his toes experimentally against Niall’s calf.

“Tickles,” Niall murmurs against Harry’s mouth. “When you do that.”

“Stop talking,” Harry says. “You’re supposed to be breathless and awed.”

Niall tilts his face up into the kiss. He sucks Harry’s plush bottom lip into his mouth and bites down gently. Harry might be purring at that, his leg sliding over Niall’s now, rubbing their leg hair together.

“I like that,” Harry decides. He hitches his knee up higher and rolls over Niall, ignoring his soft _oof_ of surprise. “At home, we sleep on the,” he points up, at the ceiling. “The up, so we don’t float away.”

Niall laughs. “The ceiling, you mean?” He traces the line of Harry’s dimple. “I figured you slept inside a clamshell. Y’know, like in The Little Mermaid.”

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” Harry says. He palms Niall’s thigh, running his hand down to his knee, where he pauses to feel out the bones with his fingertips. “Otters sleep holding hands so they won’t drift apart, did you know that?”

“Are you an otter?” Niall asks.

“No, but it might not be too bad,” Harry says. He lays his head to rest on Niall’s chest, over his heart. His fingers tangle with Niall’s in the sheets, his skin tanned and smooth, Niall’s pale and scarred.

“Eh,” Niall says. “It’s not too bad, I guess.”

***

Christmas morning dawns bright and cold and, by Niall’s estimate, way too fucking early. He stumbles out of bed and picks up the house phone on the eighth ring, because he never bothered to pick up a voicemail box from the secondhand electronics store around the corner. The manager always glowers at him the whole time he’s poking around like he runs the risk of setting off her electronics, so Niall tries to stay away.

“What?”

“Happy Christmas!” Zayn shouts, his voice full of laughter.

Niall draws out the rolling wooden desk chair under the counter and sinks into it heavily. “Go away.”

“Ha-ha,” Zayn chants, “can’t tell me that if I’m not there. Do you not want me to have a Happy Christmas?”

“You’re the literal worst,” Niall says. “Happy Christmas. Did you even sleep last night?”

“‘Course not,” Zayn says breezily. “Wouldn’t have gotten up with the girls to open presents, then, would I?”

Niall props his head up on his hand and leans back in his seat. If he rolls the chair away from the wall and stretches the phone cord out to maximum length, he can see into his little bedroom, where Harry’s pulling the blankets over the side of the bed, still mostly asleep. “I never thought I’d say this,” Niall says, “but I’d almost prefer that you were.”

“It’s not that early,” Zayn says, sounding terribly amused. “Miss you, bro.”

Niall hums, soft, so that he won’t have to stumble through saying it back, or telling Zayn that he loves him, or that he wishes he could’ve stayed. It’s all true, but it wouldn’t sound right.

“How’s home?” Zayn asks.

Niall worries over his bottom lip. He thinks about telling Zayn about the omen dog and the sound he made, like the tolling of a bell, and then he thinks better of it. It’s Christmas. Zayn is far away and happy with his family, and Niall – Niall’s not even sure who the dog could’ve meant. One of them, maybe him. No need to worry Zayn about it.

“Good,” Niall finally says. “Really good, actually.”

“You’re not lonely?” Zayn checks, which is ridiculous, but it still makes Niall tilt his chin toward his chest. He gives a negative and Zayn hums, satisfied. “Good. Be happy, okay?”

“You too,” Niall says, clearing his throat quiet as he can. “Love you, mate.”

“Same, same,” Zayn says, exactly the way he does with his sisters.

Zayn rings off, so Niall puts the old plastic phone back in the cradle and moves to the hob to make tea. He finds Harry exactly where he left him in bed when he gets back with mugs of steaming Irish breakfast tea in each hand. “Get up, lazy bones,” Niall says.

“No,” says Harry, burying his head deeper under the covers. So Niall leaves the mug of tea for him on the bedside table and settles on his couch to watch the Polar Express on cable until Harry stumbles out of bed wrapped up in the duvet, his nose and the mug peeping out of gaps in his makeshift robe. Niall checks the clock above the stove and its already almost noon; he can’t believe how long he slept.

Harry looks lightyears better than he had yesterday, Niall thinks. Warm and soft and deceptively heavy when he practically sits down in Niall’s lap. Harry studies the TV screen sleepily, and then he comes awake enough to ask, “Is that a window?” so Niall laughs until Harry slides off his lap.

They hang around the house until it’s time to go to Bressie’s and Laura’s for dinner. Harry spends most of the day exploring Niall’s kitchen and asking him what pots and pans are, and his coffeemaker and tea kettle and blender. Somewhere along the way he gets it into his head that he wants a demonstration, so Niall shows Harry how to make pancakes. Harry makes an entire box worth, more than they could eat in a whole calendar year, so Niall puts the leftovers into a doggy bag and takes them to the pub with them.

Bobby’s waiting at the table when they drop by to pick him up. Niall lets go of Harry’s hand to knock on his da’s screen door, and Harry tucks his chin inside the heavy coat he pilfered from Niall, his smile secretive.

Most of Bobby’s mates are at the pub when they arrive. Laura has the pints flowing, and Bressie is stood over the jukebox, queueing up a little Bruce to keep the Christmas spirit in the air. Laura sets the pancakes aside as pre-hangover food for the end of the night, so Niall and his dad and Harry settle in with the others. Harry’s natural charm acts like a non-magical spell, and his newness makes everything seem fresh and new. It’s easily the best holiday Niall’s had for years, since his mum was still around.

Of course, Laura follows him when he steps into the back alley for a quick smoke. Snow whirls down to the ground in big, thick flakes that stick to his eyelashes and cheeks, melting quickly in his alcohol flush.

“The dog gave me an omen,” Niall says, as soon as she’s shut the heavy metal door behind them. “The Cú Sídhe.”

“Fuck,” Laura says, taking Niall’s fag. Her cheeks hollow around the little white stick, and then she passes it back, holding the smoke inside her lungs for as long as possible before she lets it out. Her skin steams with it, some magical potion or another working to scour her body from traces of cancer.

Niall digs the toe of his trainer into a little snow mound. “Yeah.”

“Two days,” Laura muses.

“It’s Harry, isn’t it?” Niall asks. “Because of his – his thing.”

Laura doesn’t say anything, which is confirmation enough.

“Haven’t you got a tracking spell, or something? Something that would work, and he could be saved?”

Slowly, Laura shakes her head. “Can’t track a magical item, honey. You know that.”

Niall curses softly under his breath. Laura’s fair hair blows around her face, and she wraps her arms around herself in her leather jacket. She’s beautiful, and wise, and Niall desperately wishes she had some sort of advice for him. “What am I supposed to do, then? Let him die?”

“The dog is just an omen, a _could be,_ not a _will be._ ”

“So we’ll start tomorrow,” Niall says firmly. “We’ll dredge the whole bay, if we have to. Won’t sleep.”

Laura doesn’t argue. Instead, she says, “In my experience, the things you need have a way of turning up right where you need them. If you’re too busy looking, you might miss it.”

Niall puzzles over her advice for the rest of the night. Bobby waits until Harry’s hustled off to his loo to pull Niall aside and ask about it. “I know – I know you left a lot behind to come back here and take care of me, and you didn’t have to do that. I just want you to know. I’m your father, not your child. It’s okay to go.”

“Dad,” Niall says, taking Bobby’s hand between his so that he’ll stop picking at his cuticles. Niall’s mum was forever doing that for Niall himself, and he swallows past the unexpected lump that brings to his throat. “I wanted to be home.”

“There’s not much here for you,” Bobby sighs. “Not unless you want to work the docks every day for the rest of your life, like me. That’s just the facts, and I don’t mind it, but it is what it is.”

“You’re here,” Niall says firmly. “That’s what matters.”

Bobby pats him clumsily on his cheek, his face a mirror to Niall’s. “Your mum would be proud of you, lad.”

The bathroom door opens, and Bobby and Niall lean back, putting the moment aside. Harry skates his fingers through Niall’s hair, and then he tickles the back of his neck. “I pushed down the handle and the water went away, so I pushed it again. Four times. Where does the water go?”

“To the ocean,” Niall says. Harry nods thoughtfully. “We better get going. Thanks for having us, Bob.”

“Anytime,” Bobby says, looking them in the eye so they know he means it.           

***

Niall’s first inkling that all is not as it should be comes in the middle of the night, when Harry flails them both awake, choking on air. He claws at his throat like something is strangling him and, his heart pounding, Niall pulls his hands away from his throat to see. He’s got _gills_ growing back in on his neck, and Niall has a moment of absolute, utter panic – the ocean is _ages_ away – before he has an idea.

“The shower, you’ve got to get in water,” he says, mostly to himself. He cranks the water on and shoves Harry under the spray, never mind that the water hasn’t warmed and that Harry is just in his pants. Harry turns his face up to the spray and takes sipping little breaths. His face slowly fades back from purple to pink, and by the time Niall’s fully dressed and rung his dad to borrow his truck, the gills are gone.

Harry says it first, huddling in the shower with the spray still bouncing off his shoulders and arm. “The magic isn’t holding.” Harry will have to go back to sea and live on the surface, unable to dive, like one of those poor creatures stuck inside Sea World before they all got shut down.

Niall reaches into the shower and cranks the water off, Harry sinking with it like he wants to swirl down the drain, too. Niall crouches nearby, his stiff knee aching. “Laura says we find the things we need by just going about our lives.”

Harry takes a deep, shuddering breath. Then another. Finally, he asks, “And what would you be doing on a normal day?”

As it’s Boxing Day, normally shopping. So Harry towels off and bundles up in trackies and Niall’s soft Derby county hoodie, his curls tucked into the hood. “I’m not hungry,” Harry tries, when Niall sets Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops down in front of him to choose from.

“A normal day,” Niall murmurs, so Harry picks the Fruit Loops.

 _Normal day, normal day, normal day._ Niall thinks the words between every breath, his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary, although he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. He doesn’t know what Harry’s _cochallin draíochta_. Never mind the fact that some magical objects are invisible to mortals. They’d be better off dredging the bay for anything larger than a shrimp, but Laura said not to, so.

Harry clutches a plastic bottle of water everywhere they go, from the shops where Niall stocks up on the first two series of _Game of Thrones_ to finally catch up on, to the market, where he buys that week’s worth of groceries. Harry sits at the kitchen table and watches him unpack it, absently picking at the label.

“If this was an ordinary day,” he starts, so Niall pauses. “Could we lay down for a while, d’you think?”

Niall has the truck, an old rumbling Ford with an engine like something out of a silent movie and proper steel panels. Niall sits in the passenger seat and teaches Harry how to drive, and Harry falteringly pilots them to Niall’s favorite place in town. The cliffs overlook the sparkling ocean, whitecaps smashing against the timeless gray stone at the foot of the mountains.

On the opposite side, rolling green hills give away to deep green forests. A Ghillie Dhu leads a tiny forest dryad by hand up the hill even as they watch, his eyes crinkling in deep fondness, and they vanish together straight into the wood. Not between trees or into shadow, but straight into the trunk of a birch tree.

Harry loops his arm around Niall’s shoulders and pulls him close in the back of the trunk, the thick blankets Niall found in the cabin a threadbare layer between them and the cold. With Harry’s side pressed against his, though, Niall finds himself quite warm. “If I were human,” Harry starts. He has the heel of his feet together in the truck bed, his feet pointing in different directions. He carefully realigns them so that they’re shoulder-width apart. “If I were human, I’d like to go hiking. You know a good trail, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Niall nods. “There’s a spring in there my nan swore was a fountain of youth.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know,” Niall answers slowly. “She’s old as salt, but she’s alive. So maybe so.”

Harry lets out one of his weird, high-pitched laughs, and this time, Niall doesn’t need to be prompted to turn his head and kiss him.

He goes to bed that night empty-handed, and the thought keeps him awake long after Harry’s snoring at his side. 

***

Niall waits until Harry’s sufficiently distracted helping Bobby clean out the attic to sneak away. He’s just so… _good_ , is the thing. He hasn’t acted like he’s afraid to die at all, even though Niall would be shitting his pants. He woke up this morning with scales all up and down his legs, slippery and slick to the touch, choking breath down from the water bottle on the nightstand. Then he made them both tea and asked Niall rather mildly to put his favorite program on “that window that shows stuff that’s not there” for him while Niall made breakfast.

Harry made the bed and folded his pajamas and left them on a neat pile on the bed. That’s what finally made Niall crack, the neat pile of Harry’s sleep clothes on the bed like he knew he wouldn’t be coming back to wear them again. It hurts. That’s all Niall can say when Laura rings to check in on him while Harry showers. It hurts.

Bobby catches Niall double-knotting his shoelaces at the kitchen table.

“You’ll take care?” Bobby asks, because that’s priority number one.

“‘Course,” Niall answers. That’s the last thing he says to his dad, “‘Course,” like it’s any other day. Because it was.

The blue hour paints the town in shades of robin’s egg and periwinkle, like time drains the color out of old photographs. Niall passes classmates he grew up with and waves and stops for just a minute, fobbing off some lie about how he’s got to get home to take a call from his nan. Instead, he heads straight for the little boat bobbing between Fisherman O’Malley’s vessel and Mrs. Butler’s raft. He unmoors it and pushes away from dock with the paddle in hand, and when he’s close to where he thinks he found Harry, he throws his net overboard and starts dredging the sea bottom.

It’s hard, tiring work, but it doesn’t require much thinking. The hours slip away without mention. The sky stays as dark as if the moon hasn’t risen, which should’ve been Niall’s first tip-off. Their port village used to have a lighthouse, once. Then the cod market tanked and the township couldn’t afford to pay to keep the lights on, and ships stopped bringing in their fish to sell. That’s why it takes so long for him to notice that the sea is dark. Then the sky starts drizzling.

The rain sets in like it always does over the desert and over the sea: all at once, and with everything it’s got. Storm winds lash the waves and whip them up into sharp whitecaps that slosh over the side of Niall’s boat, filling the bottom with more water than he’s ever seen it have before.

Rain pours in sideways and obscures his vision. Niall lets the empty net slip over the side of the boat and rushes to the bench. He tries the starter rope four, five, six times before he gives up on it; the engine must be flooded. He grabs the oars floating along the bottom of the boat and squeezes his eyes shut against the salty rain, his face feeling wind-bitten and raw. The cold seeps through his layers of clothes and makes his tired muscles slow and stiff.

Waves rock the boat harder, sloshing more water into the bottom of the boat until it seems too full to float. Lightning streaks across the sky and thunder follows, a hollow booming echo that makes Niall jump. He drops the oars to cover his ears and only realizes what he’s done too late, in a sinking boat with no way out. He can’t even see the coast from here, and he’s never been a strong swimmer.

The boat goes down front-first, like the Titanic. Niall bails out into the waves only when he absolutely has to, and he knows he’s in trouble when the frigid water doesn’t even feel cold. The water presses in on his chest, makes him feel like he’s suffocating it, and when he opens his mouth just to force in a breath sea water rushes in. Niall could almost swear that he hears someone shouting his name, and then his head is pulled under, and everything goes dark.

***

Niall wakes up to a battering ram attempting to break straight through his chest. He tries to draw in a breath, ask the battering ram to please stop, and starts hacking up sea water instead. The battering ram starts hitting him from the back, instead, and by the time Niall’s thrown up at least a child’s swimming pool worth of sea water, he realizes that it’s not a battering ram at all. It’s Harry, clapping Niall on the back to get the rest of the sea water out.

“You’re here,” Niall tries to say. “You’ve got a tail again,” he gets out, when he notices. How Harry interprets what he means through Niall’s chattering teeth, he doesn’t know. Harry pulls him in against his chest and hugs him tight, but his skin isn’t much warmer than the ocean water lapping at Niall’s ankles.

“Next time you try to kill yourself, at least let me know first,” Harry says. His voice is so firm Niall could almost miss the way he’s halfway to crying. “Idiot.”

“S-Sorry.” He touches Harry’s tail, or thinks he does, anyway; he can’t feel anything through his numb fingers. “H-How?”

Harry’s face creases in laughter, or tears. It’s impossible to make out with heavy rain still lashing at him, sliding off of him in a way that it doesn’t Niall. “Figured it out at your dad’s, in the mirror. I never lost it,” he says. He starts pulling at his hair, or no, something on top of his head. Same as Niall couldn’t describe the sound Harry’s voice makes in his first language, his eyes can’t quite grapple with whatever Harry’s unwinding from his head.

“Sorry to do this,” Harry says. Niall’s never heard him sound so sad before, and it inflates his battered chest with panic like a helium balloon. “But you’ll die if I don’t.”

And Harry starts winding the _cochallin draíochta_ around Niall’s head, instead. Niall is still shivering too hard to get the words out, and he’s not sure what to say. “No, don’t?” He couldn’t do that to his dad. He remembers what Laura said. She called it a “blessing.” It doesn’t quite feel like that, either.

“H-H-Harry.”

“I forgot,” Harry says softly. He makes that face again, like he might be laughing or crying. “I wanted to be human so much I forgot about how much I liked being me. But I figured.” He licks his lips, Niall only vaguely aware of the way his scales are doing that flippy thing again, of the buzzing behind his eyes. “You liked me anyway, right? And we’d have still been friends?”

Dimly, Niall nods.

“I’d like to be friends still,” Harry says. Niall tries to focus his bleary eyes on his skinny, water-laden legs. He can’t make his knees bend to stand up, though, and Harry’s arm is so firm across his back. He’s not going to let go. “We don’t have to be. But we can, if you aren’t too mad at me.”

Niall opens his mouth to say something – what? What do you say in a moment like this? – and finds that he can’t form any words, that he doesn’t have any breath for it. He scrabbles at his throat, struggling with an invisible vice. Harry squeezes him tight, and then he pushes Niall’s head beneath the water.

Fear makes Niall lash out, dig his fingernails into Harry’s arm, struggle against the grip he has on the back of Niall’s head. He can’t hold his breath any longer, though, and when he opens his mouth knowing that he’s about to drown, he finds he can breathe underwater. With another shuddering breath of water, Niall realizes he’s not human anymore.           

***

Niall waits for Harry to come by in a state of restless agitation, which means he spends a lot of time turning circles and accidentally hitting himself with his own tail every time he tries to move his leg and start pacing. The first morning he woke up drifting face-down in the still sea, he thought he was a ghost. At least that put some perspective on it. Anything is better than that.

And Harry had been there. To explain, and apologize. There’s no taking it back; they’re stuck like this, swapped one for the other. Magic doesn’t come free. Sometimes Niall’s mad at him for saving him this way. Most of the time he’s grateful.

Someone kicks a bunch of loose stones off the top of the sea wall, and Niall twists around to look up, his revamped eyes cutting through the murky sea water like he was born for it. He can see Harry’s familiar curls, the deep dimple beside his mouth. Next to him is his father. Niall surfaces slowly.

Bobby lets out a low whistle. “Well,” he says.

“That’s what Niall said,” Harry observes, something like delight in his voice. He kneels on the rock and reaches his hand out to Niall, who eschews holding it in favor of letting Harry stroke his cheek and run his fingers through his hair. Harry’s never-wet hair makes sense, now. Harry’s skin is warm, and he smells like Niall’s laundry detergent and Irish breakfast tea. He’s taking over Niall’s house for the foreseeable future.

Niall shrugs. “At least nobody died. Right?” He looks up at Bobby, who sits carefully, taking his snapback off as he goes.

Bobby studies Niall closely. “Well,” he says again. “Never thought I’d have a merrow for a son, but there you have it. Well. Are you happy?”

Niall understands the way Harry sometimes looks like he could laugh and cry at the same time. He thinks he could do the same, right now. “Sure, Pop. All good.”

Bobby settles himself more comfortably on the rocky outcropping. Harry stretches out on his stomach, pulling Niall in closer with both hands on his face. Niall kisses him back carefully, tasting home. Bobby shakes out his newspaper. He clears his throat. “D’you want me to tell you the score? You’ve missed a few matches.”

“Sure,” Niall says, bracing himself on the ledge so that he won’t drift away. Harry wiggles his fingers into Niall’s armpit until Niall takes the hint and lets him slot their fingers together, instead. He puts his cheek down on Niall’s knuckles, peeking at him out of the corner of his eye. Every time Niall looks at him, he winks dopily. Niall turns his attention back to his dad, who carries on reading like nothing’s changed at all. Like all's as it should be. 


End file.
